This invention relates to a machine for cutting, conditioning and windrowing crop material, such as grasses and legumes, of the type in which a generally transverse rotary disk or drum cutter assembly delivers cut material rearwardly to an adjacent impeller rotor parallel to the cutter assembly for conditioning and discharge into a windrow and more particularly to an improved side sheet for such a machine.
In designing such machines, particular attention must be paid to the arrangement of components at the end of the cutter assembly, typically the right-hand end, which, during operation, enters the uncut standing crop. Typically, the end disk cutting element rotates in such a direction that material engaged and cut by it is carried generally laterally inward before being delivered rearwardly over the cutter assembly. Design objectives must include a divider structure which does not flatten part of the crop (and result in uncut material), and a side sheet and divider structure which avoids spilling cut material onto the ground or dragging uncut material. Difficult tangled material conditions must be tolerated without plugging and there must be smooth transfer of crop material from the cutter assembly to the rotor. In addition, the outer or end disk of such a machine must be shielded as far as possible to reduce the risk of injury to an operator or other person through inadvertent contact or through throwing of foreign objects by the disk cutting element.
In the past, the design of side sheets (extending fore-and-aft adjacent the end of the rotor and cutter assembly) has often been compromised in the interests of trouble-free non-stop operation by the adoption, for example, of divider designs associated with the side sheet having insufficient forward or downward reach to part the crop adequately and offering no safety shielding over the outermost reach of the end cutting disk element. Typically, that element is partially and dangerously exposed reaching laterally outward of the side sheet or divider wall in an attempt to achieve clean cutting.